The Ethan Hein Blog » Music Theory
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The blog covers Music Theory with various other music related topics like Composition, Improvisation, Key Musicians, Music Business, Music Teaching, etc.
The Ethan Hein Blog » Music Theory
3d ago
In a previous post, I listed examples of melodic suspensions. But I didn’t do a very good job of explaining how they work. So I will rectify that here. Suspensions are a temporary misalignment of chords and melody. I will explain this idea more completely below, but first listen to this little tune I wrote ..read more
The Ethan Hein Blog » Music Theory
3w ago
I came to Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys through my dad. He had the first volume of The Tiffany Transcriptions on CD, a series of live recordings that the Texas Playboys made for radio syndication. My dad was an impeccably highbrow opera fan, and aside from the Elvis Christmas Album, Bob Wills was the ..read more
The Ethan Hein Blog » Music Theory
3w ago
In my MusicRadar column honoring Roberta Flack, I thought of a new analogy for secondary dominant chords, and I figured that I should work it into a new explainer with some new graphics. So, if you are having trouble understanding how these chords work, read on. Secondary dominant chords solve a specific problem: how to ..read more
The Ethan Hein Blog » Music Theory
1M ago
I am mildly obsessed with this recording, both as a work of art and as a music teaching resource. While I have mentioned this track several times on here, I haven’t really dug into the details. So it’s time to change that. There’s a lot to talk about: the genre, the chords, the melody, the ..read more
The Ethan Hein Blog » Music Theory
2M ago
We devote a lot of attention in music theory pedagogy to chords. But it isn’t enough to look at what the chords are; you have to consider when they are too. The placement of chord changes in musical time is called harmonic rhythm. The easiest way to understand this idea is to look at songs ..read more
The Ethan Hein Blog » Music Theory
3M ago
This year, in addition to teaching my first NYU pop music theory class, I also taught two semesters of pop aural skills. If you didn’t go through a university music program, you may not know what aural skills class involves. Traditionally, you identify chords and intervals by ear, practice sight-singing, and do dictation (meaning, you ..read more
The Ethan Hein Blog » Music Theory
3M ago
This year I taught my first theory class in NYU’s new popular music sequence. It was not my first music theory class, or my first pop music class, but it was the first one in a university-level sequence dedicated specifically to pop. I think it mostly went great, and certainly the feedback from the students ..read more
The Ethan Hein Blog » Music Theory
3M ago
I haven’t done any culture war material lately, but Jason Yust recently published an article in the Journal of Music Theory with the title “Tonality and Racism“, and I couldn’t not respond. The arguments in the paper are relevant to my teaching life in NYU’s new and wonderful pop theory and aural skills sequence. These classes ..read more
The Ethan Hein Blog » Music Theory
3M ago
Sometimes you find a song that is so full of clear examples of music theory concepts that you want to build your whole syllabus around it. The Allman Brothers version of “Stormy Monday”, which they adapted from Bobby Bland’s arrangement of a T-Bone Walker song, is a case in point: it has extended chords, augmented ..read more
The Ethan Hein Blog » Music Theory
4M ago
My NYU pop theory class is going from non-functional harmony to the most functional harmony there is, the ii-V-I cadence. It’s subdominant to dominant to tonic, Western tonal harmony the way God and Beethoven intended. The ii-V-I comes in two flavors, major and minor. The major version is simple. Take some major scale, for example ..read more